Safari 5.0.4 blows!

[Mac_i_Am]

Yet another thread about safari & ram but the usage is getting absurd! 😡

It's using over 2.5GB of 'Real Ram' (see attachment).
Btw this was after a fresh computer restart this morning. Yet it stops responding and I'm down to a crawl and cant get any work done with it open.

Normally I have couple of mail tabs open (hotmail, gmail) + news articles from different sites and sometimes surf between facebook, youtube, etc.

FYI:
- Macbook Pro w/ 4GB ram
- Safari 5.0.4
- Click to Flash installed
- Usually have Private Browsing enabled
- Tried Resetting Safari w/o restarting it but it hardly makes a dent

I'm currently trying this on the new Firebox 4.0 but I really like Safari and hope this won't keep up! 🙁
Can anyone suggest how the usage builds up so much??

 

[pooryou]

I've noticed it often keeps hanging with the spinning rainbow until I focus a different browser window which fixes it. Also flash movies the video frequently stops but the audio continues and focusing a different window fixes that too. Annoying. Possibly related?

 

[QuarterSwede]

I get the beachball from time to time as well. Supremely annoying.

 

[Mac_i_Am]

I'm no computer expert but the impression I get is the more surfing I do (multiple sites, flash, movies, etc) the more the usage keeps building. And even after closing those windows, Safari is not able to recover from it.

Basically it keep accumulating till it reaches 2GB+ of non-stop hogging.

Very disappointed right now cos FF4 isnt doing much for me either. It's also heading north of 600MB. 🙄

 

[S.B.G]

Bah... that's nothing. I'm over 5GB of RAM used for Safari and it only took 6 days since I last restarted (OS/X 10.6.7 update).

I don't have any unresponsiveness at all; Safari runs great.

The more RAM you have the more Safari will use in order to speed up the browsing experience.

 

[Hastings101]

That's really weird, I've never gone over 1GB with Safari.

 

[Mac_i_Am]

@SandboxGeneral
It's wonderful to know yours runs great but for a browser to use that much ram is insane and shouldnt be normal (or taken as such).

I ordered 8GB of ram so we'll see how that works out 🙄

 

[S.B.G]

@SandboxGeneral
It's wonderful to know yours runs great but for a browser to use that much ram is insane and shouldnt be normal (or taken as such).

I ordered 8GB of ram so we'll see how that works out 🙄

It is in fact normal for Safari. they wrote the program to utilize RAM in such a way as to help improve performance; the more RAM you have available, the more it will use. I have 16GB total so it will use more. My MBP has 3GB and Safari only uses a couple hundred MB.

You may want to try uninstalling Flash, restarting and then reinstall it. Flash is a common denominator among freezes and crashes with Safari.

 

[Mac_i_Am]

It is in fact normal for Safari. they wrote the program to utilize RAM in such a way as to help improve performance; the more RAM you have available, the more it will use. I have 16GB total so it will use more. My MBP has 3GB and Safari only uses a couple hundred MB.

You may want to try uninstalling Flash, restarting and then reinstall it. Flash is a common denominator among freezes and crashes with Safari.

Well thats interesting... if few hundred MB out of 3GB sound alright then 2.5GB out of 4GB ram is def. too much.

And if Safari is going to suck all the memory it can, the question then is... how does one put a cap on it? I dont want it to use 75% of my ram...

 

[ghostlyorb]

That's really weird, I've never gone over 1GB with Safari.

I've never gone over 600MBs!

 

[ghostlyorb]

It is in fact normal for Safari. they wrote the program to utilize RAM in such a way as to help improve performance; the more RAM you have available, the more it will use. I have 16GB total so it will use more. My MBP has 3GB and Safari only uses a couple hundred MB.

You may want to try uninstalling Flash, restarting and then reinstall it. Flash is a common denominator among freezes and crashes with Safari.

Since you mentioned FLASH... I have the 10.3 beta installed.

 

[S.B.G]

Well thats interesting... if few hundred MB out of 3GB sound alright then 2.5GB out of 4GB ram is def. too much.

And if Safari is going to suck all the memory it can, the question then is... how does one put a cap on it? I dont want it to use 75% of my ram...

You can't cap the usage per se, but you can mitigate it by doing a Command + Q on Safari once in a while to clear it from RAM.

What do you intend on using all the RAM for that Safari is using? Unused RAM is wasted RAM. You shouldn't really worry too much about it, OS/X manages RAM rather well and will free up RAM where available for use elsewhere. If your Page Outs and Swap starting ticking upward, then you should consider adding RAM, if possible.

 

[BlackMax]

@SandboxGeneral
It's wonderful to know yours runs great but for a browser to use that much ram is insane and shouldnt be normal (or taken as such).

I ordered 8GB of ram so we'll see how that works out 🙄

Perhaps Safari 5.0.4 has a good old fashion memory leak?

 

[dirt farmer]

Perhaps Safari 5.0.4 has a good old fashion memory leak?

Certainly not on my iMac!

 

[Mac_i_Am]

You can't cap the usage per se, but you can mitigate it by doing a Command + Q on Safari once in a while to clear it from RAM.

What do you intend on using all the RAM for that Safari is using? Unused RAM is wasted RAM. You shouldn't really worry too much about it, OS/X manages RAM rather well and will free up RAM where available for use elsewhere. If your Page Outs and Swap starting ticking upward, then you should consider adding RAM, if possible.

I could use plenty of ram for photoshop, lightroom, final cut, etc... which are all hoggers and I can't ever use more then one at a time.
Plus, ram usage drains the battery quickly on my laptop...

 

[S.B.G]

I could use plenty of ram for photoshop, lightroom, final cut, etc... which are all hoggers and I can't ever use more then one at a time.

OS/X will manage it all just fine and if your concerned about it, quit Safari while working on your other programs.

Plus, ram usage drains the battery quickly on my laptop...

Then plug it in.

 

[lighthouse_man]

Whenever this happens, at least for me it is still Flash the culprit.
Next time it happens either quit Flash from the Activity Monitor or have this little app installed, it comes in handy when you can't even get to let alone start Activity Monitor.

http://www.flashfrozen.net/

 

[saxon48]

Whenever this happens, at least for me it is still Flash the culprit.
Next time it happens either quit Flash from the Activity Monitor or have this little app installed, it comes in handy when you can't even get to let alone start Activity Monitor.

http://www.flashfrozen.net/

This basically is the same thing as ClickToFlash, right?

 

[lighthouse_man]

This basically is the same thing as ClickToFlash, right?

No it's not a blocker/enabler. Once Flash has loaded and in case it starts to give trouble, this one can kill it.

Off their website:
Why not just run a normal Flash blocker in the first place?
That's a good idea too. In fact, I do both. ClickToFlash does a great job of keeping stuff from loading in the first place, but anything you've white-listed or clicked on is still going to load, and there's no way to stop them without closing your windows or tabs...unless you use FlashFrozen.

 

[striker33]

Big deal? Just having itunes and a couple of safari tabs open for 2 days straight, leaves me with 158mb RAM free. Yes I have virusbarrier's realtime scanner active, which takes 2.5gb-3gb of ram, but that doesnt explain safari and itunes needing 4gb ram between them. The problem seems significantly worse since 10.6.7 and 5.0.4.

 

[S.B.G]

...Yes I have virusbarrier's realtime scanner active, which takes 2.5gb-3gb of ram...

You don't need to run that or any virus scanner at all.

Read this: Mac Virus/Malware Info

Save you some RAM and CPU cycles.

 

[striker33]

You don't need to run that or any virus scanner at all.

Read this: Mac Virus/Malware Info

Save you some RAM and CPU cycles.

Its just in place to catch anything from all the windows junk i need to download. I also miscalculated, a lot, as it was only taking up 1.3gb of ram :S

Honestly have no idea what the issue is.

I'm not experiencing any slow down though.

 

[S.B.G]

Its just in place to catch anything from all the windows junk i need to download. I also miscalculated, a lot, as it was only taking up 1.3gb of ram :S

Honestly have no idea what the issue is.

I'm not experiencing any slow down though.

OS/X can't "catch" anything from Windows; it's like a human trying to pass the flu virus to an automobile - it just doesn't happen.

The only thing is OS/X could be a carrier of a Windows virus, and a user would have to manually [purposefully] send it on to someone with Windows; i.e. attach the virus to an email, with intent.

 

[nasty devil]

I've noticed it often keeps hanging with the spinning rainbow until I focus a different browser window which fixes it. Also flash movies the video frequently stops but the audio continues and focusing a different window fixes that too. Annoying. Possibly related?

Same thing, I get the spinning rainbow a lot.

I checked my RAM usage yesteday, Safari was eating around 3 gigs 😱

Should we wait for an update or get some ram sticks?

 

[QuarterSwede]

Very disappointed right now cos FF4 isnt doing much for me either. It's also heading north of 600MB. 🙄

I'm not loving FF4 either. The really crappy thing is that I like Chrome a lot but can't stand it's flakey plug-in support and it seems to crash on the Forum Spy which I live in when on MacRumors.